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DC Bronze Age Read-through Project: March 1971

March 1971: Aquaman saves Detroit from algae, but with a bit of a cliffhanger that won’t be resolved due to this being the final issue of the series (for now), although, they might have had room if it wasn’t for the pointless 2 page Aquagirl story. In Wonder Woman, she manages to play detective and find a guy before he makes a terrible mistake, all without the help of any men (finally!). In Superboy, the Teen of Steel goes up against an honest-to-goodness gorilla from Krypton. Then, the Legion makes its debut in this title with a quick recap of their origin, then tells how Lightning Lad and Light Lass’ brother became Lightning Lord, and got his white hair. In Superman, the Man of Steel has to deal with a man who keeps stealing his powers by using a magic harp, while also having to deal with being weakened by the Sand Creature. The cover to Batman makes it look like he’s going to deal with the Black Panthers or something, but instead it’s a misguided gang the Batman actually put together, that has no black members. Also, Robin deals with violence on campus. Over in Flash, Iris keeps keeps blurting out other people’s secrets without knowledge of doing so, including the identities of Barry and his fellow JLA members, and in the backup, Kid Flash has to keep the spirit of an Egyptian prince from inhabiting people. Speaking of the JLA, humans that apparently inhabited Earth before humans did (didn’t makes sense to me either) have returned to reclaim the planet. The JLA intervenes, but it’s actually 3 ordinary humans who save the day (even if 2 of them have no idea that any part of this story is actually taking place). Action Comics tells its own version of Clark moving from the Daily Planet to WGBS, then goes into a story about people being controlled by the music at various music festivals. The backup story involves Superman trying to save animals, and Supergirl, who have been turned into trees. But it turns out, they are only tree duplicates of whatever, or whomever, was near the tree as it grew. Also, Superman uses his x-ray vision in a way that makes no sense. Finally, in Detective, Batman takes on a guy who is damaging the paintings of a guy that he blames for a car accident that ruined his good looks. Meanwhile, Batgirl stops the man responsible for sabotaging matador’s career.

While Wonder Woman finally got a chance to shine without needing a man to help her, not all of the others heroes fared as well this month. The Batman stories were both subpar, with the one cover being completely misleading. Batgirl was a continuation from last month, and wasn’t bad, but I’m finding the Robin stories to be pretty bland and boring (and focusing on him saving the day despite being wrong a lot). The Aquaman story would have been better if the ending hadn’t been rushed, and ended on a cliffhanger, despite 2 extra pages for a pointless Aquagirl story. My only guess with that one is that they didn’t know it would be the last issue at the time. The Superman stories were pretty good, although the alternate take on Clark’s switch to TV news seemed redundant. And the backup was annoying because they had to through a pointless action scene in the middle of it that revolves around Superman using his x-ray vision to make the bad guys see each other as skeletons. That’s not how his x-ray vision works! Superboy introduces a new survivor of Krypton that is never seen again, although the Legion story ain’t bad. The JLA story is kind of pointless, although they do bring an end to the rarely mentioned Batman-Black Canary-Green Arrow love triangle by having Black Canary telling Batman that she seems him as more of a brother. And Flash was actually pretty good, and ties into the story from last issue.